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Judge Orders Child's Name Changed from Messiah to Martin

The judge appeared to be relying on her religious beliefs in (on her own initiative) rejecting the name Messiah. Her actions came in the course of considering a disagreement between the unmarried parents over the child's last name. The look on the judge's face when the reporter asks about children named Jesus is too good to miss. Watch the video.

The look on her face when she was asked about babies named Jesus was nothing compared to her look when Cyrus the Great crashed throgh her faux-wood panlled wall like the Kool-Aid Man, and challenged her to take away his title of messiah.

(Sorry about the long post, Eduardo. I didn't know it would stretch out like that.)

From NPR's blog:

The name Messiah has steadily grown in popularity since 2005. As a check with the Social Security Administration's database of baby names shows, the name was in the top 400 for 2012, after being ranked outside the top 1,000 names in 2004 and earlier years.

According to the SSA, the surge in naming babies Messiah put it fourth on the list of the fastest-growing names in 2012 — just behind Jase. But Judge Ballew says she believes the name could put an unfair burden on the boy later in life.

"I thought out into the future," she tells WBIR, explaining that the name "could put him at odds with a lot of people."

We don't look to the courts for parenting tips, and this is one reason why. On the other hand, Judge Lu Ann is probably correct in her guess that little Messiah will get a lot of abuse from his Bible-loving peer group in school.

Compared the the judge being right once, what is with the parents? I have read a dozen stories, and they all appear to be rewrites of what you see on TV above. So. Are the parents married? No answer. What is with the father -- where does he work, does he work, is he participating in raising little Messiah? No answers. All we know about the family is the mother's motto: "Everybody believes what they want."

Tom, thanks for trying to bring some context to this story. From the clip above, it sounds like the parents were in a wrangle over the baby's last name (uncertainty about the paternity of the child?) and the judge came up with a compromise (father's and mother's surnames), which also "corrected" what she saw as a problematic first name. I can see where some names could be viewed as tantamount to abuse (vulgarities or profanities), but "Messiah," like it or not, hardly seems to qualify.

Apparently some states do have restrictions on given names with numerals, ampersands, @, and even some accent marks (California tries to prohibit parents from adding the accent to Lucia or Jose). Whether these laws hold up under federal constitutional scrutiny is explored by a UC-Davis law prof: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1747858

FWIW, Dad went to school with a kid named Sterling Silver. Everyone thought that the parents were morons. But the parents thought it sounded pretty and reflected how much they valued him.

And then there was Texas heiress Ima Hogg and all those names Zappa gave his kids ...

Since paternity isn't mentioned, my guess would be that the mother just wants her kid to have her name. I can empathize with a mother not wanting to have her kid have someone else's name just because he is male and she is female, especially if she is the primary caregiver.